>> I can hash a document M before D and later prove in court that the >> document existed before D. >> >> Proof: >> >> Publish C(M) in N(D) > > Your claim would be submitted to a jury for consideration, as it's a > question of fact and not law. The jury would look at your claim of > mathematical strength, be confused, and proceed to move on to something > else. Nothing in law is proven until a jury has declared it to be so... > and pretty much everyone in a courtroom hates math.
What jury? > You can attempt to prove your timestamp is correct: but ultimately, > that's *not within your control*. It's entirely within the jury's > purview, and if the jury says "we don't buy this," then you haven't > proven a thing. What jury? > "Proof," in a mathematical sense, is irrelevant in a courtroom. Proof > is whatever you can sneak past the judge that will make the jury buy > your claim -- nothing more. You don't get to declare what proofs are > valid or invalid: only the jury does, and the jury doesn't care what you > think. Repeating yourself does not make your argument more valid. > Consider this: MD5 is still the standard hash algorithm used in digital > forensics. Makes all of us have the flaming heebie-jeebies, of course: > it's crazy to use MD5 to authenticate digital data, given the collision > attacks against it. > > But for the courts... what the courts think of as "proof" is not what we > think of as "proof." We think MD5's weakness has been proven: but so > far, juries are still regularly accepting MD5 as a cryptographically > secure hash algorithm, which means that in the eyes of the court *it is*. What juries? Look at my signature and pay close attention to the "+49". -- Jerome Baum tel +49-1578-8434336 email jer...@jeromebaum.com web www.jeromebaum.com -- PGP: A0E4 B2D4 94E6 20EE 85BA E45B 63E4 2BD8 C58C 753A PGP: 2C23 EBFF DF1A 840D 2351 F5F5 F25B A03F 2152 36DA _______________________________________________ Gnupg-users mailing list Gnupg-users@gnupg.org http://lists.gnupg.org/mailman/listinfo/gnupg-users
